CareHomeDeskCareHomeDeskHeat pumps are firmly part of the UK's move away from fossil-fuel heating, but care homes are not ordinary buildings. High hot-water demand, long operating hours, existing emitters and electrical capacity can make the business case very different from a domestic installation.
A care home runs on a different clock to a house. It is occupied around the clock, every day of the year, with domestic hot water demand that a family home never sees -- baths and showers spread across the day for every resident, laundry running through a commercial machine, and kitchens producing hot water on a schedule a heat pump has to be sized to meet, not just cope with on an average day. Heating also has to hold a consistent, comfortable temperature for frail and elderly residents who may not be able to tell you a room has gone cold, or move themselves to a warmer one. None of that rules a heat pump out. It does mean the assessment that gets you there needs to look like a commercial mechanical design, not a domestic quote.
Before anyone talks about a specific unit, the building itself needs assessing: heat loss room by room, the condition and level of insulation, what temperature the existing emitters were designed to run at, whether there is plant space for the outdoor unit and any buffer or thermal store it needs, and whether the electrical supply and existing distribution board have the spare capacity a heat pump's running load requires. Skipping this step is the single most common reason a heat pump installation disappoints -- not because the technology doesn't work, but because it was sized against the old boiler's output rather than against what the building actually needs.
Air source heat pumps take heat from outside air and are the more common choice: lower installation cost, a smaller footprint, and no groundworks. Ground source heat pumps draw heat from the ground via buried loops or boreholes, cost more to install and need enough land or the right ground conditions, but run more efficiently and quietly once in. For most care homes, air source is the practical starting point unless the site has land to spare and the extra capital cost is justified by the running-cost saving over the building's remaining life -- that comparison is worth doing properly rather than assuming either answer.
A gas boiler's output tells you almost nothing useful about the heat pump you need. Boilers are typically oversized against actual demand because doing so is cheap and forgiving; a heat pump sized the same way runs inefficiently, cycles more than it should, and struggles to hit its rated performance. A proper heat-loss calculation for the building, combined with a realistic hot-water demand profile for the number of residents and the pattern of use, is what a heat pump should be sized against -- not a like-for-like swap of kW ratings.
Heat pumps generally work best at lower flow temperatures than a gas boiler was designed to run at, which is where existing radiators become the real question. Some systems, especially if radiators were already oversized or the building fabric has since been upgraded, can run at a lower flow temperature without changes. Others need larger radiators, additional emitters, or underfloor heating in some areas to deliver the same comfort at a lower temperature. The answer is never automatic in either direction -- assume nothing stays and assume nothing needs replacing; assess the actual system.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) currently covers eligible non-domestic buildings in England and Wales, alongside domestic properties. Standard grants are £7,500 towards an air-to-water or ground source heat pump. From 21 July 2026 to 31 March 2027, eligible off-gas-grid properties replacing an oil or LPG heating system can receive an increased £9,000 grant for the same two heat pump types. Air-to-air heat pumps sit on a separate, lower grant band. There are capacity limits, eligibility conditions and off-gas-grid criteria attached, so this needs checking property by property against the current approved grant notice rather than assumed from a headline figure -- funding rules on schemes like this do change. (Source: Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, approved grant categories and values notice, updated 21 July 2026.)
A useful starting checklist before any installer visits: the existing heating system and fuel type, annual energy consumption, a current EPC if one exists, the emitter schedule (radiator sizes and locations), realistic hot-water demand for the building, the existing electrical supply capacity, available plant space, and the condition of the building fabric. Arriving at a survey with this information already gathered gets a far more accurate quote back, and makes it much easier to compare one installer's proposal against another's on a like-for-like basis.
Heat pumps shouldn't start with choosing a heat pump. They should start with understanding the building.
Worth investigating? Yes -- but assess it against the building, operational risk and likely return rather than adopting technology because it's new.
